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compilations of Beethoven mandolin music.

many many years ago I purchased a couple of German books published by Zimmermann "Musik Fur Mandoline" Heft 5 and Heft 6, that contained, I think, all of his mandolin music, along with separate mandolin, piano, and a nice guitar accompaniment. They seem to be out of print. Anyone know of something equivalent?

Re: compilations of Beethoven mandolin music.

There are only I believe 4 pieces that have survived. I think I had an urtext German collection but I would have to dig it out. IMSLP has 2 or 3 of the pieces. Prob not the variations which is the most interesting to me.

"An urtext edition of a work of classical music is a printed version intended to reproduce the original intention of the composer as exactly as possible, without any added or changed material."

Years ago I found one edition of Beethoven that had some really awkward fingering. The early composers would not indicate fingering and often not even dynamics or phrasing. I prefer ti work out my own fingering, dynamics, and phrasing. Otherwise you are just adding someone else's opinion of how it should be played or, in the case of music for, say violin, fingering that might make sense for that instrument but not for mandolin.

Re: compilations of Beethoven mandolin music.

As to a Guitar accompaniment, per crisscross’s interest, I know of 3. The German Music fur Mandoline by Zimmerman, Butch Baldassarri’s Cantabile book transposed to D minor, & the Walter K Bauer book Familiar Music for Mandolin, also transposed to D Minor.
If you find the Piano part, it is fairly easy to take the stacked notes & sus out the chords. You could write in the chords for a Guitarist to comp. I’ve had the Guitar guy I play with, comp it as a Jazz waltz. Kind of fun.
Joe B

Re: compilations of Beethoven mandolin music.

Originally Posted by Jim Garber

Which did you order and where did you order it (whatever it is you ordered)?

The Henle Urtext edition from the link above. All of the instructions etc were in German on the site, but I used PayPal so that should help. I DO read Spanish and French, and could kind of guess what it was saying I think!
Not concerned about the music part, I read music from 52years of playing piano. It was the ordering the music I was kind of concerned about! LOL!!

Re: compilations of Beethoven mandolin music.

For what it's worth, my favorite of Beethoven's four extant mandolin works is the Adagio in E-flat.

Too much tremolo sounds way out of place to me in these pieces, but can be effective for color and contrast, especially in the C minor sonatina. A couple examples: Richard Walz's recording (the second shared by crisscross above) uses a fine reproduction of an early Neapolitan type by Wolfgang Fruh in historic stringing (g'-g in octave tuning of silver-wound silk and plain brass wire, d' in twisted brass, a' in plain brass, and e'' in gut). Alison Stephens' old recording of same is the perfect opposite regarding contrasting sections through the use of tremolo:

Re: compilations of Beethoven mandolin music.

PS: I've played three of them to guitar accompaniment (the variations in D excepted). I'm not certain where my accompanist got the arrangements, but he may have made them himself. Giuseppe Aneda recorded the variations in D with Umberto Leonardo on guitar, so it has at least been done.

Re: compilations of Beethoven mandolin music.

I bought both the Behrend edition for Zimmermann and the Hladky edition as a student, and was sort of horrified at how different they were, and with no footnotes! Notes are different, one has the mandolin playing where there is a rest in the other edition, and one has repeats with second endings that the other does not. I would definitely trust the Henle edition as the most accurate.